Pathfinder Session 4- Behind the Scenes

Ok, so I’m changing the way I announce my recaps for Obsidian Portal. Instead of announcing each one as I put it up, I will just do one post with all the links, and the next day post the Behind the Scenes for the session.

The reason is I don’t want to flood RPG Bloggers with 2 sentence posts just saying, “Here it is” 1-4 times. One time is enough for people to get the idea.

I will say that this was a good session. We had fun and I got to freak my players out with the unknown. It was cut short because Angie was not feeling good and really wanted to go to bed. However she paid me great compliment before passing out, “That was actually a good session sweetie. You did good job scaring us and freaking us out.”

WIN!

This was a great session because there was so much response from all the players. We were all engaged and having a great time! The moments of this session were ones I always strive for. Maybe not in the horror and disgust department (although that’s a close second) but the emotional and initial responses.

Annnnddd now.. On to Behind the Scenes

The group follows Leo upstairs where an ugly Orc bouncer holds up his hand. Leo looks at him for a moment, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Just checkin’ it’s you, Leo.” The guard shuffles out of the way letting everyone pass.

Neteela is sprawled on a finely crafted couch smoking a hookah as a woman running her hands through her hair and a man rubbing her legs.

“Excuse me, Neteela?” Leo asks quietly.

Purple smoke leaves Neteela’s mouth as she exhales, “This better be good Leo, I’m paying good money to be pampered like this.”

“We’re here on business.”

Neteela laughs, “Of course you are. Nothing but business brings people to The Bordello

“Not that kind of business.”

Neteela raises up, “No I know not for you. What do you need?”

This was a fun start to the game because Elmer’s mother is the Mistress of The Bordello, and Elmer does a good job portraying the strained relationship of being the illegitimate child of Nym.

This was also a good way to introduce this incarnation of Neteela.

Aside: I have several characters that are my “Cid.”

I can see the players getting along very well with her.

Growing bored Laila makes her way outside. As she breathes in the night air a scream goes out from a nearby alley, “No! Let go! This is mine! Somebody help!”

“You stupid bitch! Let go! This is mine! You owe me!”

Laila slowly makes her way to the alley and pokes her head around the corner to see a man pulling on a satchel clutched tightly by a woman wearing rags. A young girl with a swollen face lies at the woman’s feet, clutching her face, blood oozing from her nose, crying.

The man pulls a dagger out of nowhere and slices open the woman’s throat. “Bitch!” He grabs the satchel and runs out of the alley. Laila attempts to tackle him, but trips on the hitch to a wagon, falling to the ground. Looking up she sees him disappear around the corner.

“Mama…” the words come from the young girl, now clutching the corpse of her mother.

Laila begins to talk to the girl, but has trouble removing her from the corpse. Suddenly guards appear in the alley, baring down on Laila and accusing her of murder. After several minutes and some rather smooth talking, Laila is now the ward of the child and the two of them, covered in blood, beaten, and tired make their way back to The Bordello.

This was an adventure hook that I had written previously to be able to throw in randomly, and I decided to put it in when Sammy told me she was going outside. I did this because Sammy chose the instinct of “Always protect the children.” So it was fun to see this play out.

The Hands begin to discuss what this could mean when a plump woman walks up to Laila, her eyes are glazed over and her face slack, “Alice got in trouble yesterday” she says tonelessly and then walks past Laila.

“What?! Hey hold on! You!” Laila grabs the woman by the arm and spins her around to face her. “What did you just say?”

The woman’s eyes are wide with surprise, “What? I said wel-welcome to Old Castro and to enjoy the lovely weather.”

The look on Sam’s face when I did this was priceless. Alice was a newly introduced character, but because Sam had to go to lengths to protect her and now there was investment, her reaction was awesome.

Dieter begins digging into his stew and muffin with zest. He suddenly grabs his jaw as he feels a sickening crunch in his mouth. He moves his tongue around and finds something hard mixed in with the chewed up muffin. Dieter spits and a molar clinks on his plate. He spits out another molar. Horrified he looks down at his muffin and sees it packed with teeth.

“Gods!”

“What?” asks Pharmakia.

“Look at this!”

“At your half eaten muffin?” Pharmakia asks perplexed.

“What?” Dieter looks at his muffin again, and there are no teeth. The two he spit on his plate are nothing more than soggy chewed up pieces of dough.

This was a good moment, because as I described the teeth being spit out, I got a couple small groans. When I described the muffing being packed with them, there was a communal moan of disgust. Priceless.

“You’re boring.. and weird” moaned Laila. “I’m gonna go bug that lady again. See what she says.” Laila gracefully landed on the floor and made her way to the kitchen where Janet was beating eggs in a frying pan and her husband was hacking at a dead skinned calf with a huge cleaver.

“Why hello again dear. Is there anything you need?” Janet chimed cheerfully.

The three of them bantered about the history of Old Castro and their lives there. “Interesting,” mused Laila. “I’m Laila, by the way.”

Janet suddenly points over Laila’s shoulder, “Oh no. Your half-orc friend is choking! I think she needs help!” Laila turned around quickly to see Pharmakia sitting, bored, her head resting on one hand as she played with her stew absent mindedly.

“She looks fine. Anyways, how did you know about my name” Laila said forcefully as she turned back around to face Janet. What greeted her eyes was an abomination. Screaming and cackling in her face was Janet with waxen skin, broken and pointed teeth, long tentacles dripping with slime and puss poke out from underneath her dress.

Before Laila could even react, a hot frying pan connects with her head and sends her skidding on her back out of the kitchen.

“Umm guys!”

Pharmakia and Dieter look up as there is an explosion from the wall and a dead calf carcass goes flying through the room and lands by the group spraying them with wood, flesh, and blood.

This was probably the best moment in the game, for me at least.. Maybe not so much for Sam.

So things pretty much happened as described, but the difference was Sam said she looked at Angie’s character. “Is she choking?”

“No.”

“So she’s not choking?”

“Nope.”

“Ok, I turn around to talk to the lady again.”

Right when she got done saying that, I just stood up and lunged at her screaming as if I was gonna hit her with something. Sam’s eyes got all big and she sank back in her seat. Awesome.

I sat back down and described what I had just “demonstrated” to her. It really added to the moment.

A ripping, gurgling noise filled their ears. Suddenly there is the sound of something heavy hitting the ground behind them, followed by the plodding of several feet as something runs away, and the rustling of bushes.

Leo and G-4863 spin around, weapons drawn. On the ground, in a crumpled heap, is the skin of the guard, his back completely torn out.

The duo form up back to back, “Come face me creature!” G-4863 shouts bravely.

“Let’s not get dramatic here, G.”

Without warning the creature leaps out from the bushes and lands on G-4863. The sound of wood splintering and cracking rings out in the stillness of night. Leo looks at his comrade, phosphorescent green liquid leaking from G’s ribs.

This was also another golden moment. I also described the creature flittering just out of their torchlight. This really got Elmer and Drew nervous.

When combat started and they began to take a beating, Drew got worked up (in a good way) and said, “This monster sucks! I want to kill it.” This, again, was awesome!

Session 5 won’t be till September sadly. However we are doing a one shot Star Wars game this Sunday, which I’m sure will be full of debauchery and stupidity. I’ll recap it Monday!

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About wrathofzombie

I am a History major attending a community college until I can get more financial aid and attend a four year school. I am living in NJ with my girlfriend who is currently wrapping up on obtaining her PhD in Toxicology. I love Star Wars, Role-playing, video games, working out, reading, writing, and hanging with my girlfriend, dog (Perfect), and two kittens (Birch and Brambles).
My main focus on this site will be my discussion of Role-playing games and ideas and hopefully contribute something worth a damn.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 6:34 am and posted in Other Systems, Role-playing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.